Snowdrop Wishes
by Scribbler
Summary: In the afterlife, if you see a snowdrop open you get to make a wish for someone you left in the mortal world. Not everybody believes this, but some do, and somehow, whether pharaoh, magician, or car crash victim, they have a knack of finding each other.
1. Amane

**Disclaimer****: **Wishfully not mine.

**A/N****: **This started out as just another unconnected vignette in _As Deep as the Sky_, and that was all I expected it to be. Then a second idea came to me, and I can feel others stirring in the back of my brain. I don't know if anything will come of them, but for now it seemed better to make this a separate project that I can update if and when inspiration strikes. Reviews still appreciated, though! No writer is an island, after all.

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_**Snowdrop Wishes**_

© Scribbler, May 2009.

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**1. Amane**

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_Under the snow,  
Beneath the frozen streams,  
There is life._

You have to know  
When nature sleeps she dreams -  
There is life.

And the colder the winter,  
The warmer the spring;  
The deeper the sorrow,  
The more our hearts sing;

Even when you can't see it,  
Inside everything,  
There is life.

-- From **There is Life **by Alison Krauss.

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Amane was aware of the stranger approaching, but she didn't look up. Nothing could hurt her here, and she was preoccupied with the little mound of snow. She poked at it with one finger. The knees of her dungarees were soaked.

"What are you doing?"

"Shhh," she murmured. "I'm waiting."

"Waiting for what?" the stranger asked in a whisper, after a long moment in which nothing happened.

"You'll see."

"I will?"

"Mm-hmm." Still she didn't look up. Mummy used to say things about watched pots not boiling, but this wasn't a pot, and she certainly didn't want it to boil. The frozen crystals twinkled like something from a Christmas card – stupid, really, since she was pretty sure it was July. Or maybe it was August. It was easy to lose track of things here.

"Are you waiting _for_ someone?" the stranger asked.

"You ask a lot of questions. You must be new."

He paused. "You could say that."

The top of the mound quivered.

"Here we go," Amane said with satisfaction. "I knew if I waited long enough I'd see it."

"See what?"

"Watch."

Gradually, though at a much faster rate than was natural, a small green shoot poked through the snow. It reached upward, lengthening and sticking out leaves like someone stretching after a long nap. The bud on the end trembled before suddenly, with one quick pop, bursting into flower.

"Snowdrop," Amane announced. "They're difficult to find since there aren't any real seasons here. You have to look really hard. Seeing one open is good luck. You get to make a wish for someone you left behind." She closed her eyes and made the same wish, the same way she'd made every snowdrop-wish since she got here what seemed like a life ago. Maybe it was. _Please let my big brother be safe and happy. Please give him friends. Please don't let him be lonely anymore. _"I wish …" she murmured, hands clenched into tight little fists that cut half-moons into her palms.

"Am I also allowed a wish?" the stranger asked. "Or is it limited to one per flower?" His tone suggested he was uncomfortable asking someone as young as her such a question. Amane didn't mind. Half the time she found she was actually older than the new arrivals. This one spoke formally, though, so perhaps for once he really was older than her real age.

Although when she finally looked up she doubted it. He'd said he was new, and he didn't look much past his mid teens. Weird clothes didn't hide the lankiness of his legs, or the thin chest he hadn't yet grown into.

She shrugged. "I suppose you'd be allowed one; as long as you have someone you left behind you want to make a wish for."

His eyes became unfocussed. She knew he was thinking back to the other side of the veil. After a moment he looked back at her.

She smiled and stood up. "I'm Amane."

"Do you often go looking for this white substance so you may make wishes on flowers?"

"White substance?" She blinked. "You mean snow?"

"Ah. Yes. Snow." He seemed vaguely discomfited, as if he should've known this. "I've never actually, ah, seen it before. Not for myself. I hear it's very cold."

"If you want it to be. Things work differently around here." She glanced down at her knees. They were already dry. The snowdrop had withered away again and was currently desiccating into dust. She sighed, hoping this time her wish had come true. "You want me to show you around?"

"I did have a guide, actually." He looked over his shoulder, as if expecting that person to reappear. "But she seems to have wandered off. Perhaps she found a giant vase to hide in," he muttered under his breath.

Amane laughed. She'd been here a long time and had an idea who he meant. There were thousands of restless souls wandering this place, unable to move on because they were still connected to the mortal world somehow, but one or two stood out. You didn't get _too_ many explosions from backfired spells, after all, so it was easy to trace them back to the same person.

"C'mon," Amane said, taking the stranger's hand. He looked shocked at the contact, though whether because she was being presumptuous, or because he just plain felt her touch was debateable. "I'll help you find her. What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't." He paused. His next words didn't seem to come easily. There was definitely a story to be told there, and Amane shivered with delight. She loved stories, and she was nothing if not patient when it came to waiting for good things to happen. "But it's Atem."

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	2. Atem

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**2. Atem **

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_I hope you never look back, but you never forget,  
All the ones who love you in the place you left.  
I hope you always forgive, and you never regret,  
And you help somebody every chance you get.  
Oh, you find God's grace, in every mistake,  
And always give more then you take, _

_But more than anything, _

_Yeah, and more than anything:_

My wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to;  
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,  
You never need to carry more than you can hold,  
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,  
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,  
Yeah, this is my wish.

-- From **My Wish **by Rascal Flatts**.**

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"So … all I have to do is wait for it to grow and I get to make a wish?" Mana looked up with a disgruntled expression. "Why have I never heard about this before?"

"You don't get to make just any wish," Amane replied. "It has to be something for someone in the mortal world."

"Who told you this?"

"It's common knowledge."

Mana harrumphed. "Not to me."

Atem declined to comment. He hadn't been here long, but already he was aware that Mana had something of a reputation, and that not listening was only a small part of it. Whether living or dead, his friend had a knack for making things … interesting for those around her.

'Interesting'. That was one word for it. 'Frustrating' was another. Also 'hair-raising'. Just like when they were children, then.

The jolt this time was less than it had been when he first put that thought into words: dead. He was dead. Him. Atem. He was _dead_. And not just the kind of dead he'd been before, no longer breathing unless Yuugi obliged him the use of his lungs, but not quite gone either. Now he was all-the-way, no-turning-back, goodbye-and-good-luck _dead_. It shouldn't have been such a big transition, but it was.

Having his old companions around him helped. He'd gone so long without his memories of them, but now he had at last recovered his old identity he valued them and their company even more. Mana, in particular, had taken it upon herself to acclimatise him to the ways things worked on this side of the veil – so she had been very peeved to find him being led around by a white-haired little girl with large green eyes and a disturbingly familiar smile. Amane didn't act like she was trying to oust Mana – in fact she was tranquillity personified, which only seemed to aggravate Mana more. Atem couldn't remember a time when she'd hung off his arm before, and he was sure that wasn't because the memories were missing.

Mana blew hair from her eyes and sat down. She immediately jumped up again. "I don't like snow. I'm glad we never had it back home."

"You don't have to feel the cold," Amane said softly. "If you want, you can turn off the sensation."

"I know that. But why would you want to?"

Amane hunched – not noticeably, but since Atem was watching her he saw it. "Sometimes it's better not to feel anything." Her voice dropped to a low murmur. "Sometimes you don't want to try to fool yourself that you're still alive."

Mana apparently didn't hear this. She was to busy kicking the snow and huffing. "This is boring. Come on, Atem; let me show you around some more. I can find _much_ more interesting things than this to look at."

Atem sighed. He didn't want to leave. "Give it time, Mana. It's an exercise in patience."

She pouted. She waited for him to change his mind. Eventually she hunkered sulkily down again. "You never used to be this dull."

"I've mellowed during my time as a spirit in the mortal world." Yet another change Yuugi and his friend wrought in him. The pang from _that_ thought would never go away, and he could only hope it would also lesson someday.

"That's another thing: I don't have anyone in the mortal world to wish something for. Everybody important to me is here." Mana sounded pleased at this, as though some great problem with the universe had finally been put right. "So there's really no point in me waiting around for some silly old flower to bloom."

"Aren't you a Guardian Spirit?" Amane asked quietly.

"Well … yes and no," Mana admitted. "It's complicated."

She could say that again. While Mana herself had been here, waiting millennia for Atem to make his final journey, part of her spirit had also been in the Dominion of the Beasts and the mortal world in the form of Black Magician Girl. She had blended so thoroughly with her own Guardian Spirit during the original battle against Zorc that she had never fully extricated herself. How she could be in two places at once, apparently two different consciousnesses, and yet still be the same person, the same single soul in the afterlife where it belonged … that part she still had problems explaining. According to all they'd learned as children, it was meant to be impossible. Your Ba and Ka reunited in the afterlife if you passed judgement and were granted passage into Paradise.

Reality, it seemed, was far different than what the Atem of three thousand years ago had been led to expect.

Amane went on in the same soft voice, "So shouldn't you make your wish for the person your spirit-beast guards?"

"She's hardly a spirit beast. I mean _I'm_ hardly a … um … oh, never mind," Mana grumbled. "I suppose you're right."

Amane didn't nod or gloat. Atem wondered how long she'd been here to develop that skill, or whether she'd been this calm before she died. Bakura hadn't talked much about his little sister, other than to admit he'd once had one, but that she'd died in a car accident before he and his widowed father moved to Japan. Atem could see echoes of Bakura in his sister, but in other ways Amane was quite different.

The top of the snow mound shivered. The tip of the shoot began to show. Despite her grumbling, Mana watched, entranced, as it pushed its way free and blossomed into a delicate little white flower, which nodded at her as if in greeting.

"Make your wish," Atem chided. He made his own reflexively – _Let nothing untoward happen to my friends now I'm no longer there to protect them _– and watched as Mana scrunched up her eyes like a small child. Apparently wishing, for her, looked a lot like constipation.

Atem blinked. Where had _that_ thought come from? Apparently Jounouchi and Honda's influence was more extensive than he'd thought. He half expected to hear Anzu whapping them upside their heads for such a remark, while Yuugi watched and shook his own head sympathetically.

And speaking of Anzu …

"There," Mana said. "I made my wish. Do I have to keep it secret?"

"I shouldn't think so," Amane said in her clipped English accent. "You're going now?"

"Yes." Mana leaped to her feet, dragging Atem to his. "I'll tell you as we go, Atem."

Atem glanced at Amane. She was staring at her hands in her lap. "Could Amane accompany us?"

Mana looked put out. Then she followed his gaze to the little girl kneeling in the snow, watching as the snowdrop curled up, turned brown and blew away. Bits of it caught in her white hair. She looked rather like a snowdrop herself.

Mana grumped. "Oh, all right."

Amane's smile was small, and still peaceful, but also a little relieved – much like Bakura's whenever Yuugi and his friends included him in some outing he'd fully expected to be left out of.

"Thank you."

"As long as you don't fall behind," Mana added.

"I won't."

"You'd better not. You have really short legs."

"I can manage."

"You sure?"

Amane blinked. "I mastered walking as a toddler."

"And I mastered casting fireballs when I was ten."

"But didn't you nearly burn down the palace with that trick?"

Mana's eyes grew wide. "What the … how did you … how could you … huh?"

"Stories of your exploits are legendary. They usually get retold whenever you blow up something new."

Atem looked between the two girls. Amane's expression was blank, but Mana's wavered between confusion, outrage and bizarre pride.

If nothing else, he thought wryly, things on this side of the veil would continue to be 'interesting'.

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End file.
